Texas alternates election years with governing years, with legislative sessions set in the odd-numbered years after voters choose their leaders. There are variations, but it’s got a rhythm: Choose them, watch them govern, choose, watch. The elections behind us, it’s time to see what this particular bunch will do.
Immigration
In-depth reporting on border issues, policies, communities, and the impact of immigration across the state, from The Texas Tribune.
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Demographics
TribBlog: Names, Photos of Prison Escapees Released
The Webb County Sheriff’s Department has released the names and photographs of 151 inmates who escaped from a Mexican state prison on the border this month. So far, he says, there is no evidence the convicts have fled to Texas.
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Demographics
The Best Political Video Moments of 2010
Politics, like football, is a full-contact sport — and the 2010 election was filled with the kind of brawling you would expect. It also had plenty of bizarre moments of the sort that make the rest of the nation believe Texas really is a different country.
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Demographics
TribBlog: Slain Activist’s Family Seeks Asylum in Texas
The asylum case of a Mexican family whose matriarch was assassinated during a political protest could “define the politics of refugee detention” and shape how the U.S. weighs future cases of those wishing to flee political persecution in Mexico, an El Paso-based immigration attorney said Tuesday.
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Demographics
Bound for Home
As he sat in traffic last Saturday on the final stretch of I-35 in Laredo in a truck loaded with U.S. goods, Higinio Navarrette was a microcosm of the holiday season on the border: an area where the local economy is as affected by security and cartel-related violence as it is by the nationwide economic slowdown.
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Criminal Justice
Triggering a Debate
Should Texas gun sellers be required to notify the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives when they sell two or more semi-automatic rifles to one person within a five-day period? The feds, desperate to stem the flow of weapons into Mexico, say yes. Gun rights advocates like Gov. Rick Perry say such a policy would be misguided.
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Demographics
The Weekly TribCast: Episode 60
For our final TribCast taping of 2010, we offer Texas political predictions for 2011.
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Demographics
Now the Fun Begins
Texas won big Tuesday with the release of 2010 census data. Ben Philpott of KUT News and the Tribune takes a look at the numbers, which will have legislators redrawing state maps to add four new congressional seats.
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Demographics
TribBlog: Texas Getting Four in Congress
Texas will get four extra seats in the U.S. Congress in the decennial apportionment process, bringing the total to 36, the U.S. Census Bureau announced today.
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Demographics
TribBlog: Jailbreak Aimed at Bolstering Cartel Ranks
The inmates who escaped from a prison in Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, which sits across from Laredo, are likely part of a plan to bolster the ranks of the Zetas cartel, says Webb County Sheriff Martin Cuellar.
